Melina: Not really I think it has everything to do with husbands and wives' males' and females' priorities, basic stuff.

Dave: Of course.

Melina: Venus, Mars, whatever.

Dave: Whatever that means.

Melina: Mm-hmm.

Dave: Yeah, so we started this club a number of years ago and give you a little background for those who are getting to know us. I was...gosh I can actually say that now. I was an old agent I was licensed by the IRS and I grew a thriving tax practice for 15 years I can't believe I'm saying that 15 years. I recently did not renew that license because I was able to walk away from that business with the growth of our club, and the growth of our real estate business, and flipping houses. And gosh, I love my life so much more since then.

Melina: And I love you so much more since you gave that up.

Dave: January till....actually really it wasn't January is more like December to May, I pretty much lived in a cubby hole, but nonetheless that's gone and so...

Melina: Hallelujah.

Dave: Hallelujah, amen. During that time you were...you've done a multitude of things why don't you share a little bit about kind of some of your background.

Melina: Well my background is pretty diversified, ironically always been involved in real estate one way or another. So my trade if you will from schooling was to be a paralegal, so I was a paralegal for 18 years. So then in real estate as well, so when I was working in different law firms I always found myself in some sort of financial world so bankruptcy, real estate law, always around real estate finance. So making the transition into the real estate market was a very easy thing for me to do because I'd been working at it for so many years.

Dave: So one of the things that...we've been together now 20 years?

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: Twenty years, do we start playing with round numbers soon is this...

Melina: It's you start talking in decades actually...

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: Yeah. Kind of like kids I don't know at what point they become, like, out granddaughter is no longer 18 months she's...

Melina: Right, two.

Dave: A year and a half and now two. So we don't say, no more like 26 months, she's now two. So I guess that's the same with our marriage we're now a couple decades into this. But during that time it hasn't always been...well it's always had its ups and downs, let's put it that way, like any other life and marriage and so forth. But Melina and I clearly we wanted more out of life who doesn't, we wanted to be able to do more things and we got in this real estate game if you will.

I don't believe in luck, I don't believe in chance, so you were having a real estate background somewhat through all the different industries that you worked in. And I had absolutely zero knowledge about real estate other than from a tax perspective understanding some of the aspects of real estate and so forth. But I used to see a lot of tax returns and do a lot of tax returns, and doing 500 plus returns a year and very few of them stood out. Maybe I was part of my...what bored me so much in that industry maybe was that I was spending so much time doing the same thing over and over and over and over.

But one thing that stood out to me was anybody who had any sort of wealth always had real estate without exception, everybody had some wealth. But when I would talk with people and I would ask them about how do they get this house or how did they acquire this, it was usually things like, "well, I inherited it", "My mom left me this house" or "I pulled equity out of this house and I bought another house when the market was up or down." But there was never really anybody that could give me a specific road map on how to do this.

So much like anyone else I was taught go to school, get good grades and those grades will take care of you. My parent's upbringing was do well in school and then you'll have a job and then your job will take care of you and then you retire on that job someday. And obviously, that wasn't practical anymore in today's day and age. So I say you and I, but I don't know if I'm the one to take the blame for taking all the seminars and let's go do this and let's go do that. And at some point, you joined along or you just...but we went on this journey to...

Melina: I feel like I started it.

Dave: You feel like you started it?

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: Which is cool, then...

Melina: It's usually not that way...

Dave: Because...

Melina: It's usually the husbands dragging the wives around.

Dave: Yeah, so Melina says let's start a business, let's do this, let's do that, and we're going through our different journeys along the way and we went to a lot, a lot, a lot of seminars.

Melina: Yeah, it was because I saw the market crashing, I knew the market was gonna crash and I knew that foreclosures were gonna be a thing, and I just needed to figure out how to buy foreclosures. I didn't realize obviously the market was gonna crash the way that it did, but I knew that the housing market was never gonna continue down the road it was. It couldn't get any bigger houses, could not possibly become more expensive.

I remember when I saw a house in Banning, it was like built in the 1920s, 900 square feet and it sold for 300 and whatever thousand dollars. And the people who bought it got 100% financing, and I was like no way there's no way this is gonna stay. I knew at that point the market was gonna bust or at least it was gonna decline. I knew people would not keep a house like that for that payment for any length of time.

Dave: Sure the house was gonna fall apart at some point...

Melina: Absolutely.

Dave: ...before they can ever possibly pay it off. Yes, we go on this journey and we end up going to seminar after seminar, after seminar. I remember specifically going to a bunch of seminars and every time I went to a seminar there was another seminar. There's always some sort of sales to the next seminar. We've got this package and then that package leads to this package, and then you can have the super titanium package and all this stuff. And there came a point where we sort of realized this is all the same stuff.

Melina: Yeah. Well actually, yeah it was all the same stuff and we were broke there's that.

Dave: So we couldn't keep buying stuff.

Melina: I kept on buying it I loved it all.

Dave: So the market turns we find ourselves...

Melina: Broke.

Dave: Yeah, mortgage loans all dried up, and let's stop for like and like give credit where credit is due because you actually stopped doing loans before you had to. And the loans were still there and people were still qualifying for them. I remember you coming in saying, "I don't want to do this, anymore people shouldn't be signing up for this 900 square foot house that's way overpriced, and or they're pulling out equity lines of credit and buying big toys and boats and other houses they can't afford." And I remember you...

Melina: Yeah, I can remember a very specific...one of my clients that I think I had refinanced his house twice and called me and wanted to refinance again and it just really bothered me. And I said, "You can't do this."

Dave: I remember that.

Melina: And he was like no I can't and I said no you can't and...

Dave: But I have equity.

Melina: Yeah, then he called me back and was mad because somebody else told him that they would put him in this loan and his payment would be blah, blah. And he was like yelling at me and I said, "Oh, no. no no, I'm not interested in doing this anymore," I don't believe that it was the right thing I felt like it was wrong for him to take cash out of his house anymore. Because I knew inevitably he wouldn't be able to afford it.

And so it didn't sit right in my spirit and so I said no I can't, I'm gonna keep on doing this, I don't even believe I'm bringing value to people's lives anymore. And once I don't believe I'm bringing value I'm out, I'm done. I will not work for the dollar. So I just told you, "Yeah, I gotta stop doing this."

Dave: What a scary time. Here I am working from December to May having zero time with family and zero time doing anything else other than taxes, and then at the same time, we had made quite a living through the mortgage business. Got accustomed to a very nice lifestyle and had all the toys and all the so forth, and then Melina saying I quit. All of sudden we couldn't fill up one of those tanks of gas on any of those toys it was a pretty harsh reality very quickly.

And so it got us looking and specifically got Melina saying, "What can we do with real estate, these houses are gonna be cheap. People are gonna lose them and we need to buy them, how can we buy them?" And that set us on this quest, this journey if you will like going all these gurus, going all these people, and then when we got there we bought other gurus. So there was always some guru coming into some guru's stage and then selling us something else.

And Melina was definitely one of the first people to line up at everyone with the American Express and buy that information, because we thought if we could get enough information were smart, were sharp, we're go getters, were motivated, and were also broken have kids we need to feed, so we need to change this. So we got on that journey and we met a friend of ours that introduced us to another group of people, and that group of people helped us to go out and secure some financing on a foreclosure that we found and we saved them from losing that house. We were able to cash a check and I always remember the number, it's funny you remember the first one but if you told me like what's the second one, what's the third one...

Melina: No clue.

Dave: No idea, but that first time we pulled out $83,210 from that house, I just remember $83,210. And we kept 50 of it, we gave up 33,000 to the other people involved in the deal that helped us get it done. And that kind of launched us, and it launched us to this idea of like...

Melina: Belief is a really big part of it.

Dave: Of their confidence.

Melina: Sure and that we could really do it.

Dave: Sure, and after we cried and wept and were overjoyed and thankful that here we were with money in the bank the lights weren't being turned off, we weren't gonna lose the house. And we came to the realization that we need to do this again and...

Melina: Right and again, and again.

Dave: And again. Looking back I know that neither one of us ever...or at least I'm speaking for myself you can correct me if you had a different thought, but we never thought we'd be sitting where we are today.

Melina: No.

Dave: So where we're sitting here...

Melina: Well, Not back then anyway.

Dave: Yeah, for several years it kind of took us a little while, and as our belief got more and more ingrained and we can make a system out of what we're doing and change the model, because really...

Melina: That was the biggest thing was I think that at some point I knew we would be successful as real estate investors, that was actually the easiest piece. The piece that was the more difficult or the more challenging which was also the most enticing by nature for you and me, was how do we help all the other people that we met at these seminars have the same realization? Let them experience the same success we were experiencing because we'd become friends with a lot of these people.

We were sitting together in these hotel rooms like all over the United States, all over the place and classrooms all over, and we met people from our local area. And you and I were like we figured it out we actually closed a deal and now it's no longer just theory it's the truth. So how do we now bring along these people who have become our friends to the same realization?

Dave: So a couple key things I think that we wanna have everybody aware of. So when we're talking about this idea that we closed a deal because we deal with this all the time now. Like how I'm I gonna close my first deal? Most of the time when new club members or students come into the organization or the club the biggest thing for them is like even if I found a deal...

Melina: I don't have the money.

Dave: I don't have the money.

Melina: How do I pay for it?

Dave: We hear that all the time and I think we live there too, it's a very real realization. You go to this three day weekend in a hotel and you've got these people that are coming in for a moment, you may be seeing them on TV at some point, you think they're like they're gonna really support me and they're really going to help me. And if I find this lead come Monday and I need money to close a deal, how do I get the money to close that deal? I don't have access to money and...

Melina: That's not real, that's the problem. That's actually not real, that's not a real concern, it's not a real problem at all. The problem is you don't know what a deal is that's actually the problem. People believe that if they can buy a house it's a deal, understanding what is a deal and what isn't a deal is the secret sauce. Because money always looks for deals always, so nobody ever wants to tell you that though. People wanna tell you, you need money, and you need this and you need that the truth is you need to understand what a deal is that's the reality of it. And the first transaction that we closed was a deal that's why we found the money.

Dave: Yeah, and I think that's a really big key for a lot of people because when you say the word real estate investor at least for me it's like, okay so I'm an investor that means I have to invest which means...

Melina: Money.

Dave: Money and when I look at my bank account and its overdrawn there's no way for me to invest. And one of the very big keys that got us into this game, because we had no money to put into that deal, so we find we find the motivated seller, which is our lead. And we find that lead we were able to put together that deal because of our connections with other people that helped us to align all the pieces of that puzzle together, and close that deal with none of our own money, because...

Melina: We had none.

Dave: Yeah, there was none too close it with.

Melina: Correct.

Dave: But some light bulbs really came on, I don't know if they came on in that moment, I don't know if they came on in the weeks to come, the month to come whatever. But one of the things we realized was that we had connections with people, there was actual people, local people these weren't a 1800 number somewhere. They were in our market, they understood our market and they helped to facilitate even our belief. I think that was a real big key...

Melina: Huge.

Dave: So that gets us moving forward and as we get moving forward we said, well let's do another one and let's do another one. Naturally, the more you do the more we start telling other people what we're doing, we're looking for leads and we're talking to other people. And other people started saying well teach me what you're doing, I wanna do that too. And gosh here we are like a flash, wow here we are many years later with this huge club and organization and deals that have literally happened gosh all over the place.

So I want people to really get today as you're listening to our very first podcast, and what's the purpose behind this. We wanna introduce you to us, we want you to know about this but then I also...wherever you're listening to like one of the big takeaways from your needs to be this you're not gonna do this business alone, you're just not going to do it alone.

Stop going to seminars and stages, and going to hotel rooms where when you leave the hotel room there's nobody there Monday. Because I can tell you from my personal experience there's never been a time where I've gone to any sort of education had all the answers come Monday and could do it all by myself. There was always...

Melina: You need people...

Dave: We surrounded ourselves with...

Melina: Definitely need a team of people.

Melina: Yeah, so here we are with New Wealth Advisors Club and we've been actively growing this club from gosh we've got people all the way down as far south as you can get, had people now fly from Colorado, we have Phoenix trying to think of all the different places.

Melina: Hawaii.

Dave: Yeah, a couple from Hawaii have spent a few months over here, and taken back the systems and what we've done, and helped to get them into a space where they've closed a bunch of deals over there. Idaho we have people from Idaho, it's kind of crazy, so it's this viral effect that took place when I look back and go all I wanted was a little office, we could close a couple of deals and...

Melina: Help our friends.

Dave: Yeah, help our friends make some money.

Melina: So along the way, I think we've created a culture of paying it forward, so like the name of the podcast right "Flippin Off" it's a purpose driven podcast about flipping houses and making a difference. And that's really what we've created. The culture that we've created over the last several years has definitely grown, it's morphed into something completely different today, than what it was when we very first started. But the foundation I think of who you and I set out to be, hasn't changed, it's just taken on maybe a different shape. Maybe we just have more systems and place more structure really as a result of your skill set.

When you take two people who have skill sets like you and I do you're the guy that has the grand vision and then has the skill set of the attention to details and the ability to carry those out. And then I'm just the heart probably I think behind it, that says keeps everybody focused on the right things really connected to our purpose which is paying it forward. If you think back to why we started the club it was because we wanted our friends that we had created to have the same success that we had. And that's how it started was the idea of paying it forward and then that has morphed into our friends paying it forward to new friends, creating new relationships and everybody just continues to pay it forward.

And that's really the juice or the secret sauce inside of the club is this culture of authentic relationships of people that are truly committed to each other's success. People who are committed to seeing others have great success and more importantly people that are in a vulnerable situation specifically inside of the real estate market right now, lots of vulnerable people who are facing foreclosure, who are downtrodden. And there's a lot of people out there taking advantage of them and we're a group of people who are committed to not letting that happen as much as we possibly can.

So we say hey we're gonna stand up for the little guy, we're going to take a stand for the vulnerable one who is maybe being taken advantage of. How do we do that? Well, we set out to serve them to help them out, and then the deals just kind of fall into place. I always say serve the homeowner don't worry about the deal and just watch the money fall in your lap. And that's a weird concept for people to grasp, however, we can stand boldly saying no this is the truth because that's what we've done for the last several years. It's why we walked away from the mortgage business because it was hurting people wasn't helping them.

How can I feel confident or feel like I'm living in integrity if the business that I don't believe that getting a new loan is really going to benefit a homeowner? I didn't feel like I was in integrity. Now we get to do that, we get to really serve people, and then the deals that we're supposed to make money on we do, and it's exciting and it's fun. And then we get to see a new generation if you will, of people, not that we're that old. But a generation of people coming in and paying it forward to somebody new, and coaching somebody new, and helping homeowners along the way it's an amazing thing.

Dave: I think you hit on something I probably just now put two and two together, so when you said you're the heart well clearly you're a big part of the brains behind everything that's happening all the systems that are happening. And inside this club, it really was formed out of friends that we wanted to help be able to get into a better spot, create leverage. A big component to this game is that, you know, you need leverage. There's only 24 hours in a day, and you can only do and touch so many properties at any given time.

Forming this club was in the very beginning not about like we're gonna form and then open it up to the world or really it was kind of let's make it exclusive, let's make it where it's just gonna be a few of us. And so we opened up our very first office. I don't even think it was 2000 square feet and here we are in this little office, and I remember signing that lease and," oh my gosh, we're gonna sign a lease and we're gonna take on..."

Melina: Scary.

Dave: "...rent." "We're gonna take on someone else's spot," or "are we really confident?" We'd closed a few deals by this time, and we had more in the pipeline and we thought okay we can do this. And this is around 2008/2009.

Melina: Eight beginning of '08.

Dave: Beginning of '08, and I remember all of our friends and family are like, "You're insane, you're never gonna do this. So you made a few bucks in real estate but how are you ever gonna sustain it," I mean, "haven't you watched the news, the world is coming to an end." We're like, "but I don't know about the news but I know we just closed another deal, and I know we have another short sale on the pipeline and I know that we have more coming and..."

Melina: Remember we were saying, "real estate's on sale, are you kidding?..."

Dave: Yeah. Right.

Melina: "...Now is the time to buy."

Dave: You show up for...

Melina: And they thought we were crazy.

Dave: You show up for...what is that? Black Friday or whatever before Christmas is launched, you'll show when everything's on sale going but when real estate is...

Melina: The day after Thanksgiving.

Dave: Day after Thanksgiving and then you...kind of shows you how much I go to that. But they don't wanna do when it comes to housing. And you can tie that together because when the housing market drops and people don't have money then I obviously can't do this business.

Melina: Scarcity.

Dave: Yeah, the scarcity mentality is there. So we go we open this little office and I remember you not being like whole heartedly like, "Yeah, okay, this is something we need to do."

Melina: No way, you say like it is.

Dave: Let's say it like it is.

Melina: I was like, "Are you mad?" "No."

Dave: "What is wrong with you?" And we're here doing it out of our house and we needed a spot, and most people said, "Well why not just rent a hotel room be like everybody else, you could teach out of a hotel room." And for me specifically, I wanted something I could call home that's why we wanted to create at the club. We actually call it a church without walls or sanctuary where people can come and it doesn't matter what they're coming for, but we want to build, support and meet their needs. And I just don't that's possible by going to the hotel room.

Melina: Hotel,

Dave: So we...

Melina: That is the unique thing about our model though is that there's other people now that are out there training people how to become real estate investors, and now they're even starting to work with them which is great. But I think the unique thing that sets us apart from everybody else is our desire to have authentic relationships with people. And not that you and I could necessarily have like a really close relationship with every club member because that would be an impossibility because the club has grown so much. However, the culture that we've created is one of authentic relationships inside the club with each other.

Dave: And attracts those same kinds of people.

Melina: That's the coolest thing. you're starting to see authentic relationships being created amongst club members, where they are in each other's weddings, where they celebrate all the holidays, their birthdays together. Real relationships they vacation together, we vacation together with...we only really vacation with people that are club members, it's like picking your family it's amazing.

So that is the unique thing that we...that's why it's purpose driven when we talk about the purpose driven flips. It is purpose driven. It is driven purposely and intentionally to have an impact on other people, you know, the ripple effect, starting with you and I, having a bit of an impact on certain people and then inspiring them or giving them a space to be able to go and serve other people and paying it forward to those other people. And just remember that commercial? You probably don't remember you're younger. But anyway there was this commercial...

Dave: You said it not me.

Melina: And it was like, "...and they told two friends, and they told two friends," and so on and so on, do remember that?

Dave: I don't remember that.

Melina: No. Okay. Probably I wonder if anybody out there remembers that commercial. Anyway, I think it was, but...

Dave: Sparrow.

Melina: Yeah I know I can just visualize the commercial in my head, it had these boxes and it would just multiply anyway. So that's kind of the idea behind it, just the ripple effect the impact.

Dave: That's really what did happen because...I mean, can you remember that warm summer day we're sitting in that little office and we've got...

Melina: Yeah, I do.

Dave: Two thousand square feet I think we had two or three offices and the little conference room, and we're having an introduction to our club, our organization, and all of a sudden I think we're expecting like...I think we're allowed to fit like 30 something people or 40 something people and over 100 showed up.

Melina: My gosh, it was crazy.

Dave: And we turned the air conditioning down as low as it could go...

Melina: And it froze.

Dave: It froze up, were standing there...

Melina: It was so hot.

Dave: And all of a sudden you look around and everybody is like touching each other with sweat dripping, I wish we had that on video that had been...

Melina: So funny.

Dave: That had been so funny. But that led to the next challenges because here we go, we didn't expect this viral effect people coming from all over the place. And we had started making some money there was money in the bank, and I get this crazy idea that ends up on a napkin and I'm sitting there going, "I think it's time to build a bigger office. I mean why not makes total sense we've out grown this one and it's been a whopping I think 10 months," about that time. We weren't doing this...

Melina: We weren't even done with that first lease.

Dave: We went done with the first lease and I'm going to our property manager saying or the owner, "Hey, we need to get out of this thing because we're not gonna re-up our lease because it's too small for us. And we have made all of our neighbors mad because we took up parking four blocks, code enforcement wasn't happy with us because we're over occupancy. You know they're serious they really are serious about that stuff."

Melina: For sure it is a fire hazard.

Dave: It is a fire hazard. And I remember going out and saying we need to find space, and now this is '09, and nobody wants to rent to us.

Melina: This is when everybody was miserable like everybody, people who maybe survived like seven and eight by nine everybody had been like bombed in one way or another. Their life had been ruined.

Dave: I remember calling that doom and gloom.

Melina: Oh my gosh, everybody was living it.

Dave: That was where clients would come to me and say, "Please tell me when I'm doing the tax practice, please tell me there's going to be an extension, on extension, on extension, for my unemployment." And there's money in the bank and Melina and I are going "okay..." or me specifically was saying, "We need a bigger space. We need a much bigger space. I don't wanna have to move again in 10 months because I think we're onto something." And one of the things we learned was that we could create leverage, we were able to teach people to finally find leads, crux of this business number, one thing you can't find a lead you can't make any money.

Melina: That's right.

Dave: So we're able to teach them to find leads. If they can find a lead do some analysis on it they didn't have to understand it all, they didn't have to be an expert at it. But if they can do that and then bring that lead back and say "Help." then could we duplicate enough of us basically, enough of you and I to be able to talk with people help people, and then try to put these deals together. As that started taking place we got more and more and more, so I go, "Why couldn't we? If we made $250,000 why can't you make 2 million it's just adding a zero?"

Melina: A couple but there's counting.

Dave: Well, yeah but you're talking about a couple million 20 million why couldn't we? We add a zero. So given that we need to find more people, we need to expand because there came this crossroads for us where it's like okay so we have a lead out of San Diego, we have a lead in Orange County, and we have a lead over in the low desert in Palm Springs, we can't get to all of them so we got to let all of them go. It's impossible for us to be in three places at once, and so we need to build some teams, we need to build some people in different areas.

And so I get this bright idea to say let's split out this office and I got somebody to look at our business plan and said, "Sure you can build it as long as it's all your cash, and if you fail you still owe us we don't care who will chase you down, if they personally sign for it and you're going to owe us to demolish it." They had a lot of confidence in us obviously so...

Melina: We just...

Dave: And said, "Okay, who cares let's do it." My whole motto in life go big or go home, let's make it bigger, better, faster. So giving credit where credit's due we really duplicated what people that we had seen, what other people had done. Took what we saw good in it and said, "Let's make it so we can take what's good about it and then get rid of what's bad about it."

Melina: Or just what doesn't work.

Dave: Or what doesn't work yeah. So we decided that we're gonna open this club, and so our club for those that haven't been there we started office 5000 square feet, and 10 offices. And we build that place and we have a real brick and mortar establishment an office like where we work day in and day out. And people can come together and collaborate and really mastermind in deals and put resources under the same roof, with title, and escrow and people with money. And all those things together contractors, and then we go about two years there?

Melina: Mm-hmm.

Dave: We had two years and what do you know we need more.

Melina: Here we grow again.

Dave: Here we grow again. So we needed more space and 2012 were sitting there and I'll never forget going to management who didn't have a whole lot of confidence in us the first time in building this place and saying," Hi..." Sandra's her name. "Hi Sandra, remember me? We need we need more space." and she said, "Sure we'd love to rent to you, we'd love to give you more space." And I said, "But this time I need you to pay for it." and here we expand. As we sit today were about 10,000 square feet, we got 17 offices there, we have a warehouse there we can...we'll talk about in just a minute. We've got now outlying groups down in San Diego, over in Orange County, out in LA, here in Riverside, we've got outlying mastermind meetings happening...

Melina: In all those areas.

Dave: All those areas and little pockets and groups of teams, and it's kind of the idea of like when you go to a really big church and it's made it into really smaller churches, all over the place these little teams that are growing. And that's brought us to now and we look at really making a difference. We're making a difference in a lot of people's specifically club member's lives, pouring in and trying to do everything we can to help them really find their purpose. And we say that all the time we don't care whether that's real estate or not. Because neither one of us are in love with real estate, it's not like we wake up and...

Melina: No. We love, hate it.

Dave: Yeah, I definitely do not get excited about dealing with contractors and permits and all these...

Melina: The City.

Dave: City governments and all that stuff that kind of drives us crazy.

Melina: That makes you wanna flipping off.

Dave: That's a different flipping off...

Dave: Got it. There's definitely those challenges but what certainly is real is that the money that's very powerful that's made behind those deals to give us the opportunity do the things that we love. And one of the things I do wanna kind of share with those that are listening, if you ever come down to our club one of the prerequisites really to join our club is that the culture that we're creating is one to serve others and give back. And we believe that starts right away, it doesn't believe when...you don't give when you've got too much, you don't give because it's like, "Oh, I have an abundance." you give where you're at right now.

And sacrificially and I mean that in this way we're many years ago when we're going all this we're going to a really small church, and the church had a small food bank. That food bank was really just a trailer out behind it where people would dump off canned goods, and so forth and people from church could, you know, what our pastor would say would come shopping once a week he'd open the doors and people could walk in with...grab a grocery bag and grab whatever they needed.

So we really saw a need and said, you know, "What could it look like if our club started to provide food for," you know, there's local families here who don't have food what can that look like? And that grew and next, we were providing for not only for our church but then for like...it was too much for our church we needed to find other people that needed that food. And that kind of grew and one thing led to another and then you end up getting an invite, and I don't remember exactly how that invite came down or a friend of a friend somebody who knew what we were doing, and said, "Hey Melina she really has a heart to serve others and maybe she'd like to be on this board of directors for this nonprofit that is providing for the underprivileged, the homeless, the needy" whatever you wanna call it and...

Melina: The vulnerable.

Dave: The vulnerable. Great. And so she comes to me and she says, "Honey, I got an invite to serve on this board of directors and it has to do with the homeless." Very specifically I remember the homeless and I wasn't thrilled, I was like wait a minute you're gonna volunteer to work with the homeless?

Now in my previous life I was in law enforcement for a few years and so I got to be on the streets and I saw what "the homeless look like" for me, was the drunk, schizophrenic that was finding a place to sleep, and wasn't necessarily welcomed by the business or the people the next morning when they got there. And we get a call to move them along, and so they weren't always happy with us, and sometimes it was even a little scary and I thought, "Gosh, I don't want my wife to be involved in some homeless guy who might be a drunk schizophrenic who wants to stab her one day." So I wasn't really all that on board and I remember her coming to me and she sold me.

Melina: I closed him.

Dave: She closed me and she baited me really good, and she said, "Well I want you to come down and check out the shelter," and I thought shelter I've been to a shelter before. That's a place where they have a bunch of bunk beds and you get people out of the elements, and this is California we don't really have elements. So they'll be fine and so I was pretty closed off to it, and I go in and I remember sitting there and it was nothing like I thought. Nothing at all. I was looking at people that looked just like me and you wearing normal clothes.

In fact, I remember sitting there and there's a guy sitting there with a laptop computer, and, "I'm like who is this guy?" and I talked to him and series of circumstances that led him to the shelter and that was where he was having housing, but he was going to work every day. So I talked to the one of the CEO's at the time or one of the managers of this place and he was sharing with me that over half the people in the shelter are under the age of 10.

I remember it striking a chord for me because growing up, I definitely not had a childhood or one that led me down a path of...I would say I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth it was more like a broken splinter one, and I was once homeless as well. And so it hit me and I was like, "Man, we have to help. How can we help? What can we do?" And going back to that heart and you really being the heart of the organization at our club it was a no brainer for you to get involved with them. And here we are several years later and when I said there's a warehouse at the back of our club, our warehouse has grown from a food bank to oh my goodness, I mean could you have written this script several years ago?

Melina: No.

Dave: You can share an elaborate on what that's been like for the charity, and the paying it forward and really paying it forward in such a strange way.

Melina: Yeah, so the organization that we're talking about is the Path of Life Ministries in Riverside, and we provide all of the homeless services in all of Riverside County actually or most of the city of Riverside sorry not just the whole county. But we have several programs where we rescue people from the elements but our motto is to rescue restore and rebuild. So it is really about putting people in housing rescuing them and then helping them rebuild and restore to actually break the cycle of homelessness that is what our goal is. It's a very, very cool organization so over the last few years I've been able to create a space where we collect not only food but toiletry items and things for people.

We place them from homelessness into homes and so they go into homes that have nothing so we were able to bring in...taking people's furniture, beds, lamps whatever store everything and then when we get to get a family into a home we're able to house it, to stock it. So it's very, very cool it's an awesome opportunity for sure.

Dave: It's kind of crazy when you think about here we are several years ago we're like, "okay, we just gotta keep our own home." and now going out finding homes putting people in these homes...

Melina: Intentionally for the guests.

Dave: And what a synergy we have with that organization with our club and it's so overwhelming. I'm sitting here doing my best not to blabber about it and get emotional about it, but it really is just that like this purpose driven life that we now have flipping houses, but making a difference. And I can say this wholeheartedly I don't even get excited about flipping houses anymore.

Melina: No.

Dave: It is just another deal and the exciting part for me now is watching when new club members come here they get their first deals, right now I have two people, in particular, I won't mention their names because...but you know who I'm talking about. And we're gonna watch him cry like a little baby...

Melina: I know I can't wait.

Dave: When he gets this check and we have his very first fix and flip in escrow right now, and I'm so much more excited about that deal closing and him getting this check. And what that means and I know that the charities that he's involved with and what that's gonna mean to his chariot and that's the juice for this and...

Melina: I was just thinking about that, I was actually thinking one of the things that I think it's important we have the "Flippin Off" a purpose driven podcast about flipping houses and making a difference. I think it's important for us to share what our mission statement is it's probably the right way to maybe bring an end to this little section. Which is the New Wealth Advisors Club is a group of people committed to empower and encourage all people to realize their core purpose in life. And with that realization, we believe everyone can live an inspired life, full of enthusiasm as they, in turn, inspire others, that is the mission statement.

We don't really care what everybody's purpose is, we don't care what each person's charity is or what the things that they're passionate about is, doesn't really matter you don't have to pick the homeless. But the thing I love is that people can pick our charity for right now, they can pick saving and serving the vulnerable like we do. They can just latch on to our purpose at this point in time, and that is what creates true inspiration I believe in people. When you realize what your core purpose in life is, and you have the ability to live it out, and you have a vehicle which is real estate in our case to get you there it's really the way of living a significant life.

Dave: That's awesome. I'm very thankful that we're sitting here doing this for the very first time and stay tuned, we'll be here, we'll be bringing you next week or the next time we do this we're gonna be bringing out one of our students and club owners...

Melina: We're gonna be interviewing different students, different success stories.

Dave: We just got an amazing story is... we're bringing out...his name is Myke. Myke with a 'Y' we're gonna bring out and have a conversation with him. And then Peter we're gonna spend some time with Peter and really break down and talk about some of the transformations in the lives that have dramatically changed and shifted this club. So I wanna say thank, you to you, and thank you for all that you do and making all this possible, and really making a difference in people's lives as we look to go flip some more houses.

Melina: All right Dave and Melina flippin out and flippin off.

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